


Defrosting Chill and Leather-bound Hearts

by simplifyingforces (vigorousplasmids)



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Catwoman - All Media Types
Genre: Christmas, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-18
Updated: 2012-12-18
Packaged: 2017-11-21 10:13:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/596524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vigorousplasmids/pseuds/simplifyingforces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Christmas in Gotham, and Selina's on the hunt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Defrosting Chill and Leather-bound Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> I'm really into the idea that in pretty much every medium, Bruce always knows Selina's identity well before she knows his, so I decided to play with that a bit.
> 
> The title is a play off of a quote by Lenora Mattingly Weber.

No matter the time of year, Gotham gleams like a jewel hard fought and hard won. Her sparkle is faded, scratched, and jaded; her sheen is dulled by the single frosted window to the apartment you bought when you were down on your luck, one job shy of being out on the street.

You keep it out of nostalgia; those dark, damp days when the only brightness was the black of Gotham's glittering night. You keep it because it reminds you of the nights when meeting him felt like meeting a far off destiny, comfortable in its tenuousness.

Right now, the window pane is fogging over from the furnace that is him and you, even when you are an eight-by-ten foot room apart. The vanity mirror is the reflection is the filter is the veil through which you eye one another. The string of kismet has reached its endpoint through your eyes.

Outside, past the stares and the fogged up glass and the tangled line drawn taut across the city to this moment, there is no snow, not on Christmas in Gotham. Snow is for late January days, when the city longs for spring. Christmas is for bitingly cold wind and harsh jagged sleet. Christmas is for the frost that gathers on every gargoyle and ledge that your bodies have wrestled and chased and loved on. The apartment may be alien, but the Gotham rooftops on Christmas are home.

The ritual is: pulling on thermal wear and cold, stiff skin-hugging leather, lining lips and eyes and puckering up to the vanity while Perry Como croons from the unchangeable station on the cheap FM radio leaning precariously on the vanity's edge. You don't have the heart to unplug it, but god knows its not your style. Your body aches with the need to run, to fly, to wrap yourself in the safety of the cold, lonesome city.

When the window was still cool and clear, you slipped out into the freezing night, boots slipping on shingles and teeth a-clacking. A few sliding handsprings and a close call with the whip around an icy guardrail and you're in the diamond district.

You're not here for diamonds tonight.

Sometimes Gotham is the only jewel you're looking for. Sometimes you're looking for the son in the shadows.

In the midst of a double twist over the ice-encrusted glass skylight over Cartier, you hear it - a slight flutter in the breeze. Without a glance, you land softly, boots sliding over the glass surface, smoothy skating towards the next roof like you're on a date at the Rockefeller Center. If you slit your eyes, the glimmering lights in the distance could be a Christmas tree.

At the ledge, just before takeoff, a stiff hand rests on your back, hesitantly. You lean back slightly, turn into the touch. You do all the right moves; the ones you learned before he was even aware of lust.

These are the events that lead you back to here, this room, with you standing in front of the vanity, Perry Como having long made his way off the airwaves for some generic jazz that signals the last dying moments of air on a night when no one should be listening to the radio any longer. You're staring at him through the mirror; he's still stopped-stuck-shy at the sight of Selina Kyle's place. He's immobile in the light of nothing but your revelations.

You kept it for nostalgia, but it's more homey than a Batmobile.

He's staring at you like he wants to consume you. The lenses of the cowl are up and his stance is ramrod straight, but his jaw is clenched and one hand flexes and unflexes in the corner of the mirror like he can't decide on flight or fight even when Catwoman's no longer around.

Slowly, you pull off the goggles, the gloves, the cowl. Your hair is grimy with slick-sweat despite the cold and your cheeks are ruddy and wind-blasted. Your eyes never leave him as you unzip the suit, peel your way open to your thermal wear.

The claws of the gloves sit harmless, waiting patiently for Catwoman after Selina is through with her endless too-bright too-polite days. He glances at them briefly and then reaches up to touch the symbol on his chest, the one you've traced and scratched and seduced but never broken through.

His face never leaves yours as he takes one heavy step, stealing the fluorescent light that emits from one pitiful bulb between you. His jaw is enhanced by light and shadow, his lips in a tight thin line that imply nothing but need.

You reach for a bottle on the vanity, dampen a cotton wipe, and swipe at the dark wine red lips that have curved and sneered and kissed him. You let your face relax in his gaze.

As you wipe away the eyeliner, you think (as you do most sunrises) that you can look so soft, and you're never sure if you should hate it.

Distracted by eyes that must close to wipe the remnants of Gotham nights away, you miss the shuffle-lean-scrape as he grabs the soft-bristled brush from the corner of the vanity, his chest and warmth so close that you feel like you're suffocating.

You feel like this time you might actually want to.

He exhales long and slow into your ear, his lensed eyes somehow still burning you through the mirror. He lifts his free gloved hand and rifles through short hair; spiky and oily, it follows his movements like an odd reversal of your rooftop escapades. Your scalp tingles at the touch as you curl into him.

You don't mind following this time.

The pitiful ceiling light dims and flickers and he draws himself into you.

" _Selina_ ," he breathes, as he brings the brush through your hair. After a few chaste passes, he places the brush in the exact same place from where he grabbed it, precise as clockwork and indefatigable as any other Gotham night. Were it not for his free hand gripping at the junction of your neck and shoulder like a lifeline, you'd question whether there was a man in the bat at all.

You bring your hand up to his face, let the tips of your fingers rest just beneath the warm place where cowl rests on cheekbone. He sighs and shifts and _concedes_ and you feel like you've revealed more of him in this singular moment than he's seen of you in the past ten minutes. He brings his arm around you, letting his hand trace indecipherable patterns on your stomach.

You stay for an indeterminate amount of time, your exposed soft face meeting his angular features in the flickering false light. His lenses are still up and his gloves are still on, but he's leaning, relaxing, melting into you. You don't think you've ever had a better Christmas than this.

The window has completely fogged over; the radio station is static for the night.


End file.
